[Percutaneous nephrolithotripsy (PCNL). The authors' own experience with 106 patients]

The authors report 106 consecutive patients who underwent percutaneous removal or debulking of renal stones from March '88 to June '94. Removal was successful in 64 pts (60%), while 6 patients (5.6%) needed a second-look section and in one case (0.9%) a third-look; in 33 cases (31.3%) PCNL was performed as debulking procedure before ESWL. The major complications were: 1 severe haemorrhage with secondary nephrectomy, 2 respiratory complications, 1 intestinal fistula, 2 hyponatremic syndromes, 1 global kidney functional exclusion and 1 sectorial exclusion. PCNL is an effective technique to treat the majority of single big renal stone or debulking procedure in staghorn calculi before ESWL.